•Russia is on the evening of October 9 talks between the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan aimed at restoring the ceasefire in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone.
Foreign Ministers Zohrab Mnatsakanyan and Jeyhun Bayramov began a trilateral meeting with their Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov one day after Russia’s President Vladimir Putin invited them to Moscow for “consultations” on ending the nearly two-week hostilities along the Karabakh “line of contact.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, reported the start of the meeting with a photograph of the three ministers posted on her Facebook page.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Anna Naghdalyan, announced Mnatsakanyan’s departure to Moscow early in the afternoon. Citing Putin’s statement, Naghdalyan said Mnatsakanyan’s “consultations” with Lavrov and Bayramov “will focus exclusively on cessations of hostilities, humanitarian issues of exchanging bodies and prisoners of war.”
Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry also confirmed Bayramov’s trip to Moscow beforehand. The Azerbaijani foreign minister met with the Russian, U.S. and French co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group in Geneva on Thursday.
As part of the group’s mediation efforts, French President Emmanuel Macron again spoke with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev by phone on Thursday night and Friday morning respectively. A spokesman for Macron told the AFP news agency afterwards that the warring sides could reach a ceasefire agreement by Saturday.
